MIL-OSI Europe: Answer to a written question – Pain and non-communicable diseases – E-002948/2024(ASW)

The Commission recognises the importance of integrated patient care pathways in addressing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and associated chronic pain.

For example, the joint action JACARDI[1] on cardiovascular diseases and diabetes aims to improve patient care pathways and address all aspects of a patient’s health, including chronic pain.

The Commission will step up its efforts on preventive health ensuring a comprehensive approach to health promotion and disease prevention[2].

The first exchange of views on these new priorities was held with the Expert Group on Public Health[3] on 30 January 2025. This provided the opportunity to discuss how the Commission can best and most effectively support Member States in preventing and managing NCDs, and associated conditions like chronic pain.

The Commission recognises the need to develop solutions to efficiently tackle chronic pain. Two call topics[4] were recently opened under the Horizon Europe Programme[5] including one linked to the scoping review[6] that offered researchers in the pain area an opportunity to apply for research funding.

Horizon Europe will continue to offer opportunities for research funding, as call topics are broad enough to accommodate for pain research.

• [1] https://jacardi.eu/
• [2] https://commission.europa.eu/document/download/b628b5a2-ac1e-4b9c-bbdd-35b82da0ac6b_en?filename=mission-letter-varhelyi.pdf
• [3] https://health.ec.europa.eu/non-communicable-diseases/expert-group-public-health_en
• [4] These topics included: ‘Tackling high burden for patients, under-researched medical conditions’ https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-hlth-2024-disease-03-14-two-stage and ‘Novel approaches for palliative and end-of life care for non-cancer patients’ https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-hlth-2023-disease-03-01
• [5] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe_en
• [6] https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/eae32303-96e3-11ed-b508-01aa75ed71a1/language-en